Hotels watch two sets of prices. Rate shopping collects the rates of rival hotels across booking channels and future dates, and compares them with your own. Parity checks look at your own rate on every channel. This page answers what changed around both, and what the booking sites allow. It rests on a European Commission release, a law book on tourism, the Booking.com terms, a Google policy, a Cornell study and a guide to fees. We read all of them on 28 September 2026. The short answer: parity clauses are gone on Booking.com in the EU, so the price gaps are real and worth watching. But the Booking.com terms bar bots that watch its pages without its written permission.
Why rates are worth watching now
For years, parity clauses tied the price on a hotel website to its price on a travel site. Several countries banned them by law. France adopted the "loi Macron" in August 2015, "which renders null and void all parity clauses imposed by Online Travel Agents". Austria and Italy followed in November 2016 and August 2017, and Belgium in July 2018.
Then the Digital Markets Act reached Booking.com. The European Commission designated Booking a gatekeeper on 13 May 2024. On 14 November 2024 it announced that "'parity' clauses are prohibited by the DMA". Hotels "are now free to offer different (including better) prices and conditions on their own website or other channels than on Booking.com". Booking may not raise its fees or de-list a hotel for doing so.
| date | change |
|---|---|
| August 2015 | France voids parity clauses (loi Macron) |
| November 2016 | Austria bans them |
| August 2017 | Italy bans them |
| July 2018 | Belgium bans them |
| 13 May 2024 | Booking designated a gatekeeper under the DMA |
| 14 November 2024 | Booking must comply: parity clauses prohibited |
So the gap between the price on a hotel website and the price on Booking.com is now a live number in the EU. A hotel can sell cheaper on its own site, and so can every rival.
Fees, and why hotels stay listed anyway
The gap matters because of the fee. For US hosts, Wise puts the Booking.com commission at 10 to 25 percent per booking, and "right around 15%" for most standard properties.
Hotels stay listed anyway because of the billboard effect. In a 2009 study, Chris Anderson listed a group of hotels on Expedia in alternate weeks and hid them in the others. Being listed increased reservations "9 percent to 26 percent (above transactions that occurred at Expedia)". His report of April 2017, on Cornell eCommons, found the effect "still occurs, since many consumers visit an OTA prior to booking".
Google checks the prices you publish
The pressure also comes from Google. Its Price Accuracy Policy says that when a user clicks through, "the total price on the booking page must be prominently displayed, be the same as the total price displayed on Google’s site". Google validates prices "with a combination of automated tools and manual processes".
Each partner gets a score from Excellent to Failed. Partners see their score and recent errors in the price accuracy report.
| score | what Google says happens |
|---|---|
| Excellent | ads and free booking links get preference |
| Fair or Poor | worse auction position, ad cost and placement |
| At Risk | most ads and free booking links turned off |
| Failed | ads and free booking links turned off |
What the Booking.com terms say about monitoring
The Booking.com customer terms were updated on 25 August 2025. Section A15.2 is plain: "Whether or not you have a commercial purpose, you’re not allowed to access, monitor, copy, scrape/crawl, download, reproduce, or otherwise use anything on our Platform using any robot, spider, scraper, other automated means". The exception is "the prior, express written permission of Booking.com".
Section A15.3 adds that Booking will block anyone it suspects of "conducting an unreasonable amount of searches" or of "using any device or software to gather prices or other information". The previous terms barred monitoring "for any commercial purpose without written permission". The current wording drops the commercial test.
The data routes that remain
A hotel does not need to scrape its own prices. They sit in its own systems, and Google shows its accuracy in the price accuracy report.
The DMA also opened Booking.com data to hotels. They "will have real-time and continuous access to data that they and their customers generate through the use of Booking.com". They can also move that data to other sites.
For rival rates, hotels buy tools. RateGain, for example, sells software to "Monitor and control hotel rates across OTAs and Metasearch". Ask any vendor how it collects rates from each channel, and whether it holds the written permission the Booking.com terms require.
If you use proxies for other work
Nothing on this page routes booking-site traffic through a proxy. We cover single sites on their own pages: Booking.com, Expedia, Agoda, Hotels.com, Trivago and Marriott. Our free proxy list and proxy checker cost nothing. Our residential and ISP proxies are on the pricing page, and residential traffic starts at $0.44/GB.
The limits of this page
We did not shop any rates, log in to any booking site, or test a proxy against one. We read the Booking.com terms only. The Expedia terms answered our server with HTTP 429, and the Booking.com partner page on Country Rates sent an empty page (HTTP 202), so this page makes no claim about rates aimed at one country. The DMA rules here cover Booking.com in the EU. The fee figures are the ones Wise gives for US hosts. This page is due for a check by 28 December 2026.
Sources
We read every source below on 28 September 2026.
- European Commission, Booking must now comply with the Digital Markets Act, IP/24/5828, 14 November 2024.
- ESHTE, Competition Law in Tourism, page 358, on the French, Austrian, Italian and Belgian bans.
- Booking.com, customer terms of service, updated 25 August 2025.
- Google Hotel Center Help, Price Accuracy Policy.
- Cornell eCommons, The Billboard Effect: Still Alive and Well, Chris K. Anderson, 6 April 2017.
- Wise, Booking.com commission percentage for US hosts.
- RateGain, rate parity.
